Friday, September 26, 2014

Traditional Morality: That Which Is Not Named

[Advisory: Explicit sexual language - Rules-7-9]: Our underground correspondent in an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep it's secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, is not finished reporting on the fallout from Cardinal Dolan's agreement to serve as Grand Marshal of the New York St. Patrick's Day Parade. His elegantly handwritten message arrived, as usual, on a silver tray with a glass whiskey (good bourbon, this time: Elijah Craig's 21-year-old single barrel) delivered by a tuxedo-clad courier with a black limo idling behind him outside the doorway.

Lots of good stuff this time, even the results of some exceptional sleuth work turning up yet another sighting of Joe O'Leary's remarks, now over at Commonweal where he has been holding us forth, along with Michael Voris, as having "a very myopic vision of gay folk and how they live their lives." Well, I guess he -- the erstwhile Professor Fr. Joseph S. O'Leary at Sophia University in Tokyo -- would know, wouldn't he. But here's our own Guy Noir for you, while I sit back and sip my bourbon:

NOR has a piece with the slug line "silence = death." But "What silence?" I ask. There is not silence but constant talk now in the Church. As a prime example, families are discarding traditional theology and morality as never before, and Rome thinks the answer is a multi-year synod to bureaucratically address the problem. DO they think the answer is some good preaching and teaching? No, the answer is more programs and policy implementations! Streamline annulments. Increase RCIA initiative. Rephrase old ideas with creative laxity. IOW, have more dialog.

On the Same Sex Marriage question, can it be denied that we have the same situation. Instead of nicely explaining we can't discuss Same Sex Marriage because we are a priori opposed to homosexuality, regardless of how people might want to define a domestic partnership, instead we converse endlessly, which leads to more acceptance, not more understanding. Witness old Fr. Joe over at Commonweal:

"intrinsice inhonestum" (Humanae Vitae) should not be translated as "intrinsically evil"

The idea that all Americans go home to happily have sex, of any sort, seems to me rather utopian. I suspect that sexual frustration is a larger reality in human lives tha[n] the blessed contentment here imagined.

Homophobes always reduce gay identity to their imagination of "male anal sex" -- which is at the core of homophobic imagination much more than it is at the core of gay imagination.

"Male anal sex fulfills no biological purpose (other than the generation of ejaculation by the participants)" -- but the same can be said of the vast majority of heterosexual sexual acts, unless one considers them all as rehearsal for the tiny number that do in fact produce a child. Sexual acts, as most human beings know, have many purposes other than the biological, and the goodness of these purposes should be recognized.

"in direct conflict with the teachings of the Catholic faith. This is not rocket science." Quite; it is just dogmatism and refusal of discussion, when even the pope and several cardinals have suggested that discussion is needed.

Discussion is needed. Seriously? Only if the goal is final acceptance of gay sex. Here's a question for discussion: Was Jesus dogmatic? Was Paul? Was Moses? Was anyone NOT so prior to the Council?

[Even foul-mouthed comedians sometimes seem to "get it" better than academics, and see the absurd ironies attendant to the self-promotion of deviancy, as Norm Macdonald does in his gay pride joke on the Dennis Miller show (Advisory: explicit and perverse sexual language - Rules-7-9 - you have been warned!)].

But Mr. Noir was not through with his comments:

"And then there is this depressing NOR item. I had already noticed National Review's retreat from any good religious commentary, and its patronizing inclusion of K. Lopez' peppy pro-Catholic shtick. Book editor M. Potemra does say nice things about conservative books, in the Ratzingerian style of meaning it without really meaning it. So he can plug Scott Hahn's Bible AND HvB's univeralism and gay marriage at the same time. He ought to be a Cardinal! But here is this, related... Common sense has left the building along with his right hand man Straight talk."

After reading that, I decided that Mr. Noir needed the bourbon more than I did; so, after finishing what he sent me, I immediately sent my own courier out to fetch a bottle of Woodford Reserve, and had him fly out to that eastern seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets and deliver it to the poor soul.